The realms of the Egyptian dead, according to the belief

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The Ancient East

No. I

THE REALMS OF THEEGYPTIAN DEAD

BY

A. WIEDEMANN


ACCORDING TO THE BELIEF OF

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

BY

A. WIEDEMANN, Ph.D.

AUTHOR OF "^GYPTISCHE GESCHICHTE," "hERODOTo

TES BUCH," "die RELIGIO

ALTEN ^CYPTER," ETC,

TRANSLATED BY J. HUTCHISON

LONDON: DAVID NUTT57-59 LONG ACRE

1902

6^

CONTENTS

TACE

Introduction, 7

Destruction of Mankind . . , . . 11

Death i.

Confusion of Religious Ideas. ... 17

Realms of the Dead :

(a) Under the Earth. Journey of the Sun in

the Under-World 18

(J) In the Sky a8

(c) On Earth 33

Osirian Doctrines . . , . • • 35

Dismemberment of the Corpse ... 36

Embalming 40

Offerings to the Dead 43

Journey of the "Osiris" 51

The Fields of the Blessed .... 54

Immortal Parts of the Man . . . . 57

Summary 61


In any attempt to form some concept of the world

and human life, the question which has most keenly

exercised both the peoples of antiquity and those

of to-day is always the same : whence are the

universe and its inhabitants, and whither does it

all tend? In the following pages we shall con-

sider the ideas developed in the Nile Valley re-

specting the issue of all things, and especially

concerning the death of man, and that other world

to which after death he hoped or feared to go.

It must, in the first place, be noted that in Egyp-

tian texts no indications of the existence of any

myth predicting the final destruction of the world

have hitherto been found. Whether no such myth

existed and men in the Nile Valley were unable

to imagine that this best of all worlds should one

day no longer be, or whether the absence of such

indications is the result of chance cannot now be

decided. The idea that men must logically have

8 INTRODUCTION

conceived an end of the world having accepted a

beginning, a creation, does not apply to the Egyp-

tians, who in their speculations disdained the

claims of logic, accuracy and similar exactions of

later times. But though they did not conceive

the destruction of the whole world, they possessed

myths which tell of attempts on the part of the

gods—never entirely successful—to destroy por-

tions of the earth, or rather mankind. As far as

their contents are concerned, these myths belong

to the widespread cycle of Deluge legends.

First to be noted in this connection is a passage

in a hymn of about 1200 B.C. addressed to the

deity embracing and ruling the whole world. It

alludes to a deluge in the words :" Thy flood [the

god's] rises to the heavens, and the roaring water

of thy mouth is in the clouds. Thy jackals are

on the mountains." That is to say, the jackals,

which, according to an idea prevailing especially

in the New Kingdom, drew the Sun-god in his

boat, have retreated to the mountains. "Thewater of the god Horus covers the great spaces

of all lands ; the flood of waters covers all quar-ters of the heaven and the sea. The lands wouldbe [even now] the dominion of the flood werethey not under thy sway. The waters move nowupon the way that thou appointest ; they cannotpass over what thou ordainest [the path] thatthou openest before them."

THE NILE 9

According to the text, this deluge which covered

the trees and drove the Sun-god to the mountains

came up from beneath, as the Egyptians supposed

to be the case with the Nile flood. A similar

story was probably at the source of the Platonic

dialogue "Timaeus," in which Egyptian authori-

ties are often quoted. There it is used as an

argument to deny the flooding of the world and

the destruction of its inhabitants—so far, at least,

as Egypt is concerned. For, according to Plato,

it was by similar floods in other lands that towns

perished, and only the herdsmen were saved ; in

Egypt, however, neither then nor at any other

time did water flow down from above upon the

fields ; it came up from below, and hence it was

that in Egypt were preserved the memorials of

ancient times.

In the valley of the Nile the whole conception

of a flood no doubt arose from the frequent occur-

rence of fossil shells in the strips of desert at the

edge of the cultivated land and on the Egyptian

hills. The Greeks also observed them, and it

was on the fact of their presence that Herodotus

based his theory of the origin of Egypt. He pro-

nounced the land to be alluvial, formed by the

gradual deposit of mud in an arm of the sea.

This opinion is substantially correct, although the

Greek historian greatly underestimated the time

in which the process could have been com-

10 INTRODUCTION

pleted, allowing only from ten to twenty thousand

years.

The words immediately preceding the pas-

sage in Plato alluded to above have often been

adduced to prove that the tradition of a world-

conflagration had a place in Egyptian mythology.

But the passage in question by no means proves

this. A priest ef the city of Sais, in Lower Egypt,

is there represented as saying that, in consequence

of the divergence at long intervals of the heavenly

bodies that encircle the earth, all that is on earth

is destroyed by fire, but that the Nile protects the

Egyptians by pouring forth its waters in flood.

According to this text, the destruction wrought by

such a conflagration is denied as respects the

Nile Valley. No more is to be made of certain

passages in Egyptian writings which have been

claimed as indicating the same myth. In them

we read of a fire which threatened the god Horus,

the son of Isis, and which Isis succeeded in ex-

tinguishing with water. This has been supposed

to be a general conflagration, for the quenching of

which the goddess caused water to rise. But in

this passage there is no mention of a burningworld ; only of the burning of the place whereHorus was at the time—probably the hut in theDelta where Isis hid him when she was seekingthe body of Osiris, and where he was exposed tomany dangers. The primitive means whereby

DESTRUCTION OF MAN ii

Isis procured the water for the extinction of a

world in flames were at least somewhat peculiarly

inadequate for the purpose ; an early version of

this ingenuous passage is found in the Ebers

papyrus (about 1800 b.c).

Thus, regarding the destruction of the world

whether by water or by fire, there is nothing in

Egyptian texts to throw light on such ideas in

other countries. We are much more fully in-

formed concerning a tradition which relates to a

divine attempt to exterminate the sinful race of

mankind. This myth has been preserved in two

versions in the graves of Kings Seti I. and

Rameses III, and in these forms dates therefore

from about 1400 to 1200 b.c. Several other refer-

ences to it exist, showing that from the second

millennium b.c. it must have been well known in

Egypt. Whether it existed earlier it is impos-

sible to say, no certain proofs of this having yet

been discovered.

Like most Egyptian myths, this also is con-

nected with the Sun-god Ra-Harmakhis, the first

divine king of Egypt, whom the legends repre-

sent as entirely human. He grows old and weak

like other men, and we read of. him often as an

old man from whose failing hands the reins of

government are gradually slipping. Gods and

men venture to resist him, trying to cast him from

his throne or to push him more and more into the

12 DESTRUCTION OF MAN

background. The myth now under consideration

begins with these words: "Ra is the god who

created himself. He was the king of gods and

men. Men took counsel together against his

majesty and said, ' Lo ! the god Ra is grown old ;

his bones have changed into silver, his limbs into

gold, and his hair into lapis-lazuli.'" The Sun-god

heard these words and called together the other

gods to consider what ought to be done to those

men who owed their existence to the Eye, that is

to say, to the tears of the god, and who now were

rebelling against their lord and creator. Thegods advised him to send out his Eye against the

rebels in the form of the goddess Hathor-Sekhet

—that is to say, an incarnation of the sun in his

burning and scorching might. This was done.

The goddess set forth to slay mankind. Several

nights she waded in human blood from Heracleo-

polis Magna, in Middle Egypt, to Heliopolis, the

most sacred city of the Nile Valley, where the

gods were wont to meet in council. But mankindwas not entirely exterminated, for the god soon

repented him of his command. He sent messen-

gers to Elephantine to fetch fruits to which anintoxicating and narcotic effect was ascribed. In

Heliopolis these were pressed, and at the samelime corn was crushed for beer ; then the twowere mixed and seven thousand jugs of beer made.During the night this beer was poured out over

DEATH 13

the fields which were covered with the blood of

the men killed by Sekhet. "And the goddess

Sekhet came in the morning ; she found the fields

flooded, she rejoiced, her heart was light, she

went about drunken and no longer heeded men."

Mankind was saved ; and in memory of this a

feast was instituted at which much beer v/as

drunk in honour of Sekhet, a feast that was cele-

brated up to the Greek period. But the god Rawas no longer willing to rule over ungrateful men.

When men knew this they repented ; they took

bows and arrows and killed all who had rebelled

against the god. Then Ra spoke : "Your sin is

forgiven ; the killing [you have done on my behalf]

atones for the killing [my foes plotted against

me]." In spite of this forgiveness, men so far

failed of their aim that the old god held to his

resolve to go away to a better world, newly

created by himself. To earth he left as a substi-

tute for his own sun-power a new young sun as

lord and king.

These are the only indications to be found in

Egyptian texts of the conception of an impending

or once threatened destruction of the world and

of mankind. Much fuller in every respect is the

material that has been preserved relating to the

Egyptian conception of the end of the individual,

14 DEATH

not only of the human individual—which must

first be considered— but also of that of each

god and animal as conceived on similar lines.

It is owing to the peculiar character of the

remains in the Nile Valley that we are so well

informed on this point. These relics relate almost

exclusively to death, and are the spoils of tombs

and of funerary temples. Moreover, the thoughts

of the Egyptians dwelt much and gladly on death,

which had no particular terror for them any more

than for modern Orientals. To them death was

no final end, but only an interruption of their

existence. It was a violent interruption certainly,

for to the ancient Egyptian death was not a

natural result of the wearing out of the body.

To him each death was a kind of murder. The

body of man throughout life was regarded as a

battlefield where good and evil spirits fought for

the mastery. If the man rem.ained in health, the

former had the upper hand ; did he fall sick, the

latter had succeeded in gaining ascendency ; hence

he must do his best to help the good spirits.

This he did by wearing amulets to drive away the

evil ones, or by repeating spells against them.

Even in diseases caused by evil spirits these werethe orthodox remedies; the medicines adminis-tered at the same time only served to reducesymptoms and owed much of their virtue to

spells repeated during their preparation. The

HOSTILE SPIRITS; SPELLS 15

cure was not due to the medicines, but to the

conquest by spells and powerful magic symbols

of the demon who had entered into the man and

caused his suffering. With the departure of the

demon the sickness ended.

The strife in and about the human body lasted

a longer or a shorter time according to the power

of the spirits at strife. But experience had

taught men that in the end the evil spirits always

won a species of victory. One of the countless

male and female sicknesses, male and female

deaths, as the Egyptians expressed it, succeeded

at last in destroying the man's mortal frame.

But this death of the body was only an incident in

the struggle which lasted beyond the grave, and

the existence of the immortal parts of the manmight be threatened by many dangers even as

his mortal frame had been exposed to risks

during his lifetime. Hostile spirits could prepare

for him a second death, and hence the Egyptian

strove eagerly to find means which would be

efficacious beyond the grave to protect from foes

himself and his forefathers. Both in this world

and the next, the best, and indeed the only hope-

ful precautionary measure against any threatened

danger, was the knowledge of the appropriate

spell. Egyptian religious literature, therefore,

consists to a large extent of collections of such

spells : they were sculptured on the walls of the

1

6

SPELLS

grave or on the sides of the sarcophagus, or

written on papyrus rolls and placed with the

dead in the tomb.

Probably that is also the reason why there is

so comparatively little to be learned from these

religious texts regarding the actual conditions of

existence in the world to come. They tell us

exactly what name a man had to give when he

arrived at one of the gates of eternity, exactly

what the bench, helm, and sails of the death-ship

were called ; the exact forms of the many names

and titles of Osiris, in what words the demons

must be greeted who dwelt in the various areas

of this mysterious kingdom ; but they give no

complete picture of the appearance of that world.

It is certainly possible to translate the individual

formulae but often impossible to understand them,

as they refer to myths unknown to us, and this in

a manner so far from clear that the myths cannot

be reconstructed from the formulae. Here, for

example, is a spell against snakes ofabout 300OB.C.

:

" The snake curls round the calf; the snake curls

round the calf, oh hippopotamus that earnest

forth from the earth 1 Thou devouredst what cameforth from thee. Snake, as thou descendest, lie

down, draw back. The god Henpesetet is in thewater, the snake is overthrown, thou seest thegod Ra." What is meant by the calf, the hippo-potamus and the snake, and in connection with

INCOHERENT BELIEFS i?

what incident they come together, is not told.

The sentences give us words, but the meaning

evades us. It is the same with countless other

formulae of a similar kind, and this fact, together

with the many clerical blunders committed by the

early copyists in putting together their papyri,

shows that even to them the spells were often

not entirely comprehensible.

To the difficulty caused by insufficiency of

material in any restoration of the conception of

a future life in the Nile Valley we must add a

second : the entire absence of systematic thought

that characterised the Egyptians and which per-

mitted them to write and to believe the most con-

tradictory doctrines at one and the same time.

They never made any attempt to put their ownreligion into systematic form, to reject what wascontradictory to the main dogmas and to makethese consistent with one another. On the other

hand, they faithfully retained all that their an-

cestors had once believed, together with all that

later generations had added, untroubled by the

various modes of thought that existed side byside and mingled together. In this religious con-

glomerate the people received first all the various

local cults which, arising from a common basis,

had in different city and village temples gradually

attained an independent and often very peculiar

development. There remained also the ancient

B

1

8

REALMS ,0F THE DEAD

faiths in' their original forms as once held among

the various tribes from which the Egyptian people

had sprung in primitive times, so that primitive

Semitic, primitive Lybian and many other con-

ceptions present themselves side by side in

bewildering variety. Nor is this all. Within

historic times many systems of religious thought

were borrowed from neighbouring nations and

added without modification to the Egyptian stock,

so that the Semitic Baal and Astarte, together with

their companion deities, found equally accredited

places alongside the native gods of Egypt.

It was long believed that this confusion of

religious ideas was to be found in later texts only.

Since the inscriptions in the pyramids of the

Fifth and Sixth Dynasties have come to light weknow that this chaos is as old as any literary

Egyptian tradition. No doubt it must have come

about gradually, but the period of its develop-

ment lies beyond our knowledge of the Egyptian

people. Hence it seems useless to indulge in

hypotheses regarding its course which may be

shattered by any stroke of a spade, any newdiscovery of a text. In the present state of ourknowledge a cautious student will confine himselfto stating the separate dogmas, examining their

changes during Egyptian history and inquiringinto their meaning. The question of their originand of their age is better left on one side.

COURSE OF THE SUN-GOD 19

Among the various Egyptian conceptions of the

other world one of the most important and most

widely diffused is connected with the sun and its

apparent course during the twenty-four hours.

The travelling of the star of day was accom-

plished, in the opinion of the Egyptian, in exactly

the same way as his own when he undertook a

journey through his native land—namely, by boat.

But the Sun-god travelled on a celestial ocean or

a celestial Nile, flowing in a fairly straight course

through the celestial land, as the earthly river

flows through Egypt. On this river the sun-boat

usually floated with the stream, so that it needed

a rudder only ; oars and sails are seldom named.

Only in exceptional cases is there any mention of

a towing of the sun-boat, and then it is generally

done by jackals. This recalls the manner in

which boats were taken up stream in the Nile

Valley, but the human force used here below

was replaced in celestial regions by that of crea-

tures partaking of the divine nature. In the

middle of the sun-boat there is a shrine-like

cabin, in which the Sun-god, represented by day

as a hawk-headed man, stands or sits, and on the

boat there is generally a helmsman, besides

various gods forming the court of the king of

heaven. According to the most numerous and

the most ancient representations, the god uses for

his journey during the daytime two boats, one

20 REALMS 01^ THE DEAD

for the morning, another for the afternoon, and

changed boats at noon. In later times the

journey was less simple. At the end of each

hour the god disembarked and embarked again

in another boat. The journey was supposed to

occupy twelve hours ; that is to say, the time

from sunrise to sunset, divided into twelve equal

parts. From this it may be concluded that for

the Egyptian an hour was not a fixed space of

time as it is with us. Its length varied with the

season, being longest at midsummer, shortest at

midwinter. The length of the hours of the night

varied correspondingly. The time from sunset to

sunrise was divided into twelve equal parts, and

the variation in their length was, of course, the

reverse of the variation in the hours of the day.

Each hour was in charge of a special goddess,

who throughout its duration kept watch and

accompanied the Sun-god on that part of his

voyage.

The day journey ended in the west : then began

the night journey. The sun-boat floated back to

sunrise in the east on a stream flowing through

the kingdom of night. This journey of the Sun-god seemed to the Egyptian symbolic of the life

of man. The Sun-god is born in the morning,ages in the course of the day, sinks in the eveningas an old man into darkness to rise in the morningonce more to new life. According to the general

THE UNDER-WORLD 21

idea the birth and death of the Sun-god took

place daily. Elsewhere we have a second con-

ception, according to which the process was com-

pleted in the course of a year. The god awakes

with the spring sun to new life, and he dies with

the sun of winter. Here the condition of death

•nvolved in the course of twenty-four hours is

absent, or is reduced to a very short space of

time. Judging from occasional allusions in the

texts, there seem also to have been other concep-

tions according to which the life of the Sun-god

was much longer, lasting three hundred and sixty-

five years or more, and which probably referred

to chronological periods. But such indications

are by no means clear, and it is certain that these

ideas never attained any wide popularity.

An exhaustive description of the night journey

of the Sun-god is first found in texts of the NewKingdom, i.e., after 1700 b.c.

;yet many passages

in older inscriptions and pictorial representations,

specially on coffins of the Middle Kingdom,

indicate that the doctrine existed much earlier,

though it does not seem to have taken fixed form

until the second millennium. We have it in the

Book of Am-Duat

—

i.e., " Of that which is in the

Under-world"—and in the Book of the Gates, each

of which describes independently the topography of

the under-world. These texts are found in papyri

and on sarcophagi, and more or less fully in the

2 2 REALMS OF THE DEAD

Tombs of the Kings from the Eighteenth to the

Twentieth Dynasty, in a short as well as in a

fuller and illustrated edition. In spite of the

contradictory nature of their contents the Book

of Am-Duat and the Book of the Gates are found

inscribed in the same tomb : another indication

how little attempt the Egyptians made at systematic

thought on religious subjects.

These doctrines flourished at a time corre-

sponding to a period of Egyptian history whenthe kings resided chiefly at Thebes, and they

appear to have received much of their develop-

ment in the circle of the Theban priesthood, for

it is in the tombs of these priests and of their

relatives that they have been found in writing.

This fact also explains why the Sun-god of night

is always represented in these books as a ram-headed man, since it was in the form of a ramthat Amon, the great god of Thebes, had descended

to earth. In this series of texts the ram's hornsof the god are invariably represented as project-

ing from the sides of the head. Now it has beenthought possible to prove that of the two kinds oframs associated with Egyptian deities, the ramwith the horizontal horns was sacred to the godChnuphis of Elephantine, and that the horn curl-ing round the ear, so well known from the Romanstatues of Jupiter Ammon, belonged to the godAmon. Figures of kings of the Nineteenth

THE UNDER-WORLD 23

Dynasty wear such horns occasionally as a head-

dress in token of their descent from the god Amon,

and with similar implication Alexander the Great

and his Successors had them sculptured on their

statues. If this distinction applied all over Egypt

it would lead to the repudiation of any connec-

tion between the nocturnal Sun-god and Amon of

Thebes ; but in face of the monuments such a

theory would not hold good. In the period nowunder consideration, Amon is frequently repre-

sented with horizontal horns, even in circum-

stances where there can be no thought of a blend-

ing of his form with that of Chnuphis. It seems

to have been for the most part artistic or practical

reasons which then decided the choice, and in

statues the horizontal horns are almost always

avoided as having the less durable form.

Over the entrances to the Tombs of the Kings

there is carved as a kind of superscription a sun's

disc, in which is placed the figure of the god as

just described, and behind it is the figure of a

large scarab. The first is the god of the Night

Sun, to whose kingdom the tomb belonged, and

whose dominions its inscriptions describe, while

the scarab is an emblem of the Morning Sunwakening to new life, and is at the same time a

symbol of the renewed life of man after his earthly

death.

The order of the scenes in tjiese representations

24 REALMS OF THE DEAD

of the under-world is generally the same. The

reliefs run along the walls in three rows, one

above another. The middle one shows the river

of the under-world on which the sun-boat sails,

sometimes carried along by the stream, sometimes

by spells, and sometimes towed by spirits subject

to the god. Above and below are pictures of the

banks of the river. Ahead of the boat and on the

banks stand, sit and lie, in bewildering variety,

the innumerable demons that people the fields of

the night. Sometimes they appear in human

form, sometimes as animals, especially as snakes,

whose presence was naturally to be expected in

an underground kingdom. Sometimes they appear

as cynocephali, which in the Nile Valley were

often associated with the sun. Sometimes they

are creatures half-animal, half-human, most

grotesquely composite. The names of the demons

as well as their pictures are given on the monu-

ments, and thus we recognise that but few of

them had any connection with the great gods of

the land. Most of them are gods of one special

function whose names indicate their immediate

employment : "The Cutting One," " The Rending

One," " The Stabber." Some were friendly to the

Sun-god, but countless others were hostile to him.

At the head of the latter was the great snake

Apopis, the incarnation of the power of dark-

ness, who strives to bar the way of the Sun-god

THE UNDER-WORLD 25

and to work his destruction. At the last moment

he is always conquered by the friends of the Sun-

god, fettered, cut asunder, but never finally killed.

No matter how wounded, invariably he returns to

life again, and, resumes the strife with the good

god of warmth and light, a strife which, in

Egyptian opinion, never ended in victory on

either side.

We need not here describe all the genii of

this under-world. The various spirits, variously

represented, may be studied in the two books to

which we have referred above. The one text is

'easily distinguished from the other, for in the

Book of Am-Duat each Hour-Space is separated

from the next by a door; in the Book of the

Gates the door is replaced by a fortified pylon.

The demons, excepting a few companions of the

Sun-god, always remain in the same Space, and

according to this special doctrine of a future life,

so do the men who have died. They join the

Sun on his journey from the western horizon, and

are left by the god in different parts of the under-

world, where he gives them fields to till on which

they must henceforth live as vassals, always ready

to help their lord against his foes if any should

threaten to attack him on his passage. Theirs,

however, was no joyful lot. With delight they

hailed the Sun-god on his appearance ; but at the

end of an hour he vanished, the door of their

2 6 REALMS OF THE DEAD

room closed after him, and for the next twenty-

three hours they had to wait in a darkness which

was relieved only by the light which came from

fire-breathing serpents, or from the sea of flame

in which the captive foes of the Sun-god were

burning. It is noticeable that the same fate over-

takes high and low, kings and subjects. Fewindeed are the mortals who succeed in escaping

it, and those who do are not such as have lived

good lives on earth ; they are those who have

acquired an exceptionally large knowledge of

magic, and who have striven also never to show

themselves enemies of the Sun-god. These suc-

ceeded in constraining him not to set them down

on his course, but to bear them along in his train,

ever circling round the heavens in the solar bark.

This view that good and bad were on the same

footing as regards the life to come, and that the

deity caused no special reward after death to fall

to the lot of those who had obeyed his commands

on earth, occasionally struck the ancient Egyptian

as unjust. Hence there was introduced into the

Book of the Gates a judgment scene—in which

sentence is pronounced on the deceased—similar

to that of the judgment before Osiris in the Bookof the Dead, to which we shall presently recur.

Between the fifth and the sixth Hour-Space there

is a hall in which Osiris sits upon his throne sur-

rounded by the gods of his circle. In his presence

THE UNDER-WORLD 27

the soul of the man is weighed against his deeds,

while at the same time a cynocephalus, the animal

incarnation of the god Thoth, drives from the hall

with a stick a hog, the representative of Set, the

god of evil, and banishes it from the company of

the good. In the next Space the good are seen

tilling the fields, while the wicked, tied to stakes,

are awaiting their punishment and will eventually

be cast into seas of water or fire.

It is noticeable how little attempt has been

made to work this judgment scene into the fabric

of the rest of the text. It is inserted bodily to

fill up a mental hiatus, and no trouble has been

taken to alter those parts of the work which take

it for granted that there is no such judgment.

Most significant of the trifling expenditure of

thought that must have been given to it is the

fact that the interpolation is not made at the

beginning of the text, but much later on : logically,

the judgment ought to take place before the

god, accompanied by the dead, starts on his

way through the under-world. Neither did the

Egyptians ever attempt to represent in detail the

journey of the souls of the just and the unjust

as far as this judgment hall.

The same melancholy conception of existence

after death is to be noted in a series of exhortations

to the enjoyment of life. From about 2000 B.C.

these are found in many Egyptian texts, expressed


in very various terms, but always alike in thought.

For example, a stela puts into the mouth of

a dead wife the following adjuration to her

husband :" Oh my comrade, my husband ! Cease

not to eat and drink, to be drunken, to enjoy the

love of women, to hold festival. Follow thy

longings by day and night. Give care no room

in thy heart. For the West land [a domain of

the dead] is a land of sleep and darkness, a

dwelling place wherein those who are there

remain. They sleep in their mummy forms, they

wake no more to see their comrades, they see

neither father nor mother, their heart does not

yearn for wife and children. On earth each

drinks the water of life, but I suffer with thirst.

Water comes to him that sojourns on earth, but I

pine for the water that is by me. I long for the

breeze on the bank of the river to soothe myheart in its woe. For the name of the god whorules here is ' Total Death.' At his call all mencome unto him, trembling with fear. He makes

no difference between gods and men ; in his eyes

high and low are equal. He shows no favour to

him who loves him ; he carries away the child

from his mother and the grey-haired man alike.

None comes to worship him, for he is not gracious

to his worshippers, and he pays no heed to himwho brings gifts to him."

IN TtlE SKY 4

9

The systems hitherto considered all placed the

dwelling of the dead in a kingdom below ground.

Another series represents it as in the sky above

the earth. Contradictory opinions reigned as to

how the soul succeeded in gaining admission

either to the sun-boat, or among the stars, or to

the wide-spreading fields of the blessed. Accord-

ing to one theory the soul repaired to that spot on

the horizon where the sun sank through a narrow

cleft in a rock, and there clambered into the boat.

We have seen already that, according to one view,

with the help of magic the dead might succeed in

sailing with the sun through the whole realm of

the under-world, and in the morning rise with

him again in the eastern sky. Others postulated

the existence of a certain ladder, by means of

which the dead could climb into heaven with the

help of a particular spell. A third conception,

connected with the practice of burning the body,

represents the soul of the dead man as rising to

heaven from his ashes. This idea, though very

ancient in Egypt, never prevailed widely in historic

times, for the burning of the body, which even at

the beginning of Egyptian history had become rare,

so as to be practised occasionally only, and almost

exclusively in the case of kings, was in later times

superseded by embalming. The practice was not,

however, forgotten, and traces of it are found in

the second millennium b.c. in sacrifice offered


at the burial of distinguished persons, when

human beings were burned in order that they'

might be sent as quickly as possible after the-

dead man to act as his servants. The idea that

burning was an efficacious method of forward-

ing anything to the dead continuously survived

in the practice of despatching gifts to the upper

regions by means of burnt offerings, a custom

in radical contrast to the far commoner one of

placing them in the grave. The latter method

presupposes at least a temporary sojourn of the

dead man in the tomb.

A much more prevalent idea than either of

these as to the means of transit from this world

into the next was one according to which the

soul rises to heaven in the form of a bird, in the

case of a king almost invariably as a sparrow-

hawk. Usually, however, and especially where

ordinary mortals were concerned, the soul took the

form of the so-called ba, a human-headed bird,

sometimes represented with human arms. Gene-

rally it was a male bird, it being an Egyptian

idiosyncrasy to think of a deceased person in the

next world as male, even though she were a

woman, to call her " Osiris," and to attribute to

her a male soul-bird. Seldom in early, thoughsomewhat oftener in later, times, the dead womankeeps her sex, is called as an immortal not " Osiris "

but " Hathor," and is figured as a soul-bird with

IN THE SKY ai-

a woman's headdress, without beard, and occa-

sionally with a woman's breast.

Heaven once attained, the soul dwelt hence-

forth in the circle of the gods. The texts do not,

as a rule, tell us how and on what principle a

place was assigned to it, and what was its

position in relation to the gods and to other souls

that preceded and followed it thither. The pyra-

mid inscriptions, which are of about 3000 B.C.,

are somewhat more detailed respecting the souls

of the kings, and show that the king had first to

win in fight with the older gods the place that he:

claimed as corresponding to his earthly rank. As

it had been with the dead god Osiris when he

was about to become king of the realm of the

dead in the West, so was it exactly with the

deceased Pharaoh. The old gods who had

hitherto ruled there resisted the new dominion

and must needs be conquered by force before the

reign of Osiris could begin.

The arrival of the dead prince in heaven is

described as follows :" The sky weeps, the stars

quiver, the warders of the gods tremble and their

servants flee when they see the king arise as a

spirit, as a god who lives on his fathers and takes

possession of his mothers. His servants have

caught the gods with a lasso, have found them

good and dragged them forward, bound them, cut

their throats and taken out their entrails, have cut


them in pieces and boiled them in hot caldrons.

The king devours their magic power and eats their

souls. The great gods are his breakfast, the

medium gods his midday meal, the lesser gods

his supper, and the old gods and goddesses he

uses as fuel. The king devours every thing that

comes in his way. He swallows all greedily, and

his magic power becomes greater than all magic.

He is an inheritor of might more than all other

inheritors ; he becomes the lord of heaven, for he

ate all the crowns and all the arm-bands, he ate

the wisdom of every god," &c. &c.

By conquering and devouring the gods together

with the emblems of their power and their orna-

ments, the king becomes lord of heaven. Theidea that man can procure for himself spiritual

qualities by purely material processes is widely

diffused. The eating to this end of the heart and

the brain of the conquered foe, or'of a powerful

animal, and other similar customs, are found amongvarious peoples. In Egypt this train of thought

was supported by much assertion. He who would

be true ate truth in the form of a little image of the

goddess of Truth. A god bestowed life and power

by allowing his favoured one to breathe in through

his nostrils life and power in the form of the

hieroglyphic signs representing them. Immor-tality could be gained by sucking the breast of a

goddess and imbibing her immortality with her

ON EARTI-t 33

milk. Thus, in the pyramid text, the king be-

comes all-embracing godhead by means of his

meal of gods, though the fact must be emphasised

that the other gods were not therefore supposed

to cease to exist. As Truth may be eaten by an

individual man and nevertheless endure to be con-

sumed in the same way by others after him, so, in

spite of having been devoured, the gods retained

their independent existences.

There is no indication as to how the Egyptians

explained it that the king who had become a god

kept his dominion and did not fall a victim to the

next dead Pharaoh, who likewise was equipped

with all magic power. Probably they did not

trouble themselves about it, and were content to

picture their own future life as pleasantly as pos-

sible without considering later generations and

their claims on immortality.

Under the earth, as well as above it, the Egyp-

tian imagined a realm of the dead ; and he also

held that on the earth itself a similar kingdom

existed. The manner in which this resurrection

on earth was supposed to be brought about is

again very variously represented. Some of the

conceptions are borrowed from plant life. Fromthe body, or some part of it, such as a drop of

blood shed by the dying man, there sprang up a

c


tree which became his new body. Sometimes the

seat of hfe was the blossom, sometimes the wood,

so that if the tree were felled a splinter sufficed to

prolong the life in question. This tree represent-?

ing the living being after death became in later

times, when the myths had lost their original

force, the tree that overshadowed the chest con-

taining the corpse of Osiris, the story of which is

known to us through Greek authors. Other

representations show, not a tree, buL_X£»rxL_a5.

springing from the body. According to widely

diffused ideas, it was thus that Osiris woke_ip

new life ; and his example was, m a certain sense,

catching. Sometimes there was placed near the

coffin a bed on which a miniature cornfield in the

form of Osiris was made to sprout in the hope

that the deceased would follow the divine ex-

ample. To the Egyptian of historic times the

sprouting was no symbol ; the texts declare dis-

tinctly that "Osiris" was the corn that had sprung

forth from his mummy. Owing to a similar train

of thought, a conventionalised aquatic plant became

one of the commonest amulets denoting the resur-

rection ; and the goddesses, who are ever renew-

ing their youth, carry the same as a sceptre.

Another series of accounts represents the resur-

rection as an awakening to new life of the bodythat has been laid in the grave. They tell in

great detail, and often with an effect of much

THE OSIRIAN MYTH 35

triviality, how the dead man opens his mouth

again, how he can move his arms and legs, how

his digestion begins to work and his power of

generation returns to him. These various lines

of thought can be grouped together as dealing

with the doctrine of immortality in connection

with Osiris. Much as they differ in detail they

have this in common, that they always name the

god Osiris as a prototype, as the first being to

whose lot such a resurrection fell. :

Osiris, the son of the god of earth and the god-

dess of heaven, was the first king w'lo ruled

Egypt in human fashion ; he showed his divine

nature by his graciousness and beneficence. But

he did not succeed in winning all hearts. His[

own brother Set plotted against him ; with the

aid of several other conspirators he ensnared Osiris

and murdered him. According to the later form of

this myth, the body of Osiris was placed whole in

a chest and thrown into the Nile. It was found

after long wanderings by his wife and sister the

goddess Isis, the divine ideal to the Egyptians of

wife and mother. According to an older legend,

the murderers cut the body in pieces and scattered

them over the land. For a long time Isis wan-

dered up and down till she had found all, or almost

all, the parts. She then put them together and-

restored the body in order to bury it. Other

authorities, however, represent that each part was:

36 DISMEMBERMENT OF CORPSE

left on the spot where it was found, and buried in

one of the temples that the Greeks afterwards

distinguished by the name of " Serapeum." In

such sanctuaries special respect was paid to cer-

tain parts of the god's body; for example, in

Letopolis the neck, in Athribis the heart, and in

Abydos the head was sacred. Nevertheless, in

the same temples, in sharp logical contradiction to

this cult of the separate parts, men held also by

the myth of the burial of Osiris as a whole, and

celebrated feasts in commemoration of it.

This belief in the mutilation of the corpse of

Osiris seems to have been strongest in early

times in Egypt, for it could be brought into con-

nection with the dismembering of the humancorpse which was then customary. It was divided

into a varying number of pieces, but the severance

of the head from the rest of the corpse was con-

sidered specially important. The pieces were

I buried in the cultivated land, probably near to the

former dwelling of the deceased. After a time,

when the flesh had decayed, they dug up the bones,

collected and cleaned them, and buried them in

their final tomb in the sand of the desert at the

edge of the Nile Valley.

Even in the age of the pyramid builders this

custom had become less common, though it wasnot entirely forgotten in much later times. Reli-

gious formulae in funerary. texts are based on the

DISMEMBERMENT OF CORPSE 37

belief that the severed head will be restored to

the dead man in the next world. Occasionally

the custom was actually practised even in com-

paratively late periods. Bodies have been found

which were first beheaded ; then the rest of the

body was embalmed, the head fastened to the

neck with a stick, and the whole swathed in

mummy cloths. In the pyramid age the entire

body was sometimes treated in similar fashion.

It was allowed to decay, the different bones were

collected, each was wrapped separately in linen,

and the linen packets were placed together in the

order corresponding to the position of the bones

in the human skeleton.

The dismembering and reconstruction of the

corpse was not, in later times at least, the result

merely of a wish to facilitate the dead man's

passage into the other world ; side by side with

that intention ran in all likelihood the hope of

throwing obstacles in the way of his return into

this world. In common with other peoples the

ancient Egyptians regarded the dead as being

bereft of all the joy of existence, and for the

most part malicious beings who, filled with envy,

must needs long to vex and distress their sur-

vivors. The more carefully the rites of burial

were carried out the sooner might the departed

souls be appeased ; to satisfy them fully was

difficult, if not impossible. It was therefore

38 DISMEMBERMENT OF CORPSE

important to resort to the same expedients which

have been employed by the peoples of many

lands to protect themselves against the dead

who might return to earth as vampires : e.g.,

cutting off the head of the corpse. Where

the human body is considered the only possible

form for the dead to take, this remedy might be

regarded as infallible, but this was not the case

in the Nile Valley, where the dead man returning

to earth did not need to enter his own body again

but might choose from many other forms at his

disposal. There was danger of his so doing if he

observed the mutilation of his body and wished

to punish the perpetrators of the deed. This

must have been the consideration that led the

Egyptians to reconstruct the body after dis-

membering it. If the dead man came to his grave

to see that all was right and the corpse seemed in

outward appearance in perfect condition, he was

satisfied. If in an unhappy moment it occurred

to him to re-enter it, the body fell to pieces or

lost the head, and his hope of regaining his former

shape was annihilated. Such thoughts certainly

assume a remarkable absence of insight on the

part of the dead man. But that again is a con-

ception common to almost all nations. Death

and the devil and the spirits belonging to their

circle are commonly represented as stupid and

easily deceived. Countless examples of this are

OSIRIS, KING OF THE DEAD 39

to be found not only in the tales of the ancient

and modern East ; in the folk-lore of northern

nations there is rich and varied illustration of the

same ideas.

Occasionally the legend of the dismemberment

of the body of Osiris is associated with the

similar treatment of the human corpse, but this

occurs seldom in comparison with the countless

number of assertions that the body of Osiris

was buried intact. It was his relatives who ful-

filled this pious duty, and thus showed men what

it became them to do in similar cases. Isis sang

the lament over her brother, supported by their

sister Nephthys, and repeated the spells which

would protect the dead against the dangers of

the next world. The jackal-headed Anubis, who,

like the Greek Hermes, stands ready to accom-

pany the dead into the land of shadows, did not

confine himself to this duty for Osiris, but under-

took the burial also. Horus, the son of Osiris,

avenged^his father's death on the murderer Set,

and after long and changeful conflict wrested

from him the succession to the throne of Egypt.

But the great result of all this zeal on the part

of the survivors was this—Osiris gained the

power to go on living in his former shape, to

overcome the demons of the other world, and to

found a new kingdom in their dominion, over

which he reigned as a gracious and just ruler of

40 EMBALMING

the dead even as he had once ruled in this world

over the Hving.

The myth in this form was to the Egyptian of

historic times a type of his own lot. Like_ Osiris

he must die, but like Osiris he hoped to rise again

and to live on in the world to come not only in

his earthly body, but generally also with his

earthly rank, as a loyal subject and vassal of his

god and king. In this cycle of conceptions the

embalming of the body was considered the chief

requisite for securing the permanence of the

personality. That elaborate treatment of the

corpse which has long seemed the most striking

of Egyptian customs had for its aim the hindrance

of the rapid decay incident to so hot a climate.

The Egyptian method of arresting it was cer-

tainly very simple and somewhat rough. Thebody was first treated with natron, and thus de-

prived of moisture ; then bitumen was poured over

it to destroy the germs of decay. Wonderful as it

is that corpses thus treated have resisted decay

so as to have lasted centuries long down to our

own time, it must be noted that the mummy has

only a distant resemblance to the body which the

ancient Egyptian inhabited in his lifetime. It

was impossible to preserve the soft internal parts

from destruction. Lungs, heart, stomach, intes-

tines were removed at the beginning of the

process, and also the brain, as being the earliest

POSITION OF THE BODY 41

victim of decay. As the result of the mutilation

of the body for this purpose the whole abdomen

fell in ; moreover, the bone between the nose or

mouth and the cavity of the brain was destroyed

that the brain might be extracted. The natron

and bitumen consumed the fleshy tissues, leaving

the bones and the black or dark brown skin. It

is only in the case of the very carefully treated

mummies of distinguished persons, especially of

kings and queens, that the features remained

recognisable ; the corpses of the common people

present, for the most part, a repulsive appearance.

The corpse was laid carefully in the coffin, the

mouth closed, the arms crossed on the breast or

laid straight alongside the body, which was

usually stretched horizontally on the back. In

earlier periods there are some exceptions to this

rule. In the flagada period, before that of the

pyramids, when embalming was far less common,

the bodies were usually placed in a crooked

position, and so they have been found as skeletons

;

the knees drawn up to the breast, the arms resting

partly upon them and the hands placed over the

face. The dead must rest in the grave in the

position in which the child awaits its entrance

into the world, which by further analogy wasascribed also to the soul awaiting the resurrec-

tion. Somewhat later and down to about 2000 b.c.

the corpse was often placed upon the left side, or

42 SIGNIFICANCE OF EMBALMING

if on the back the head was turned to the left.

That was the direction—looking towards the

West and the realm of the dead—in which it was

believed that the dead man could see out of his

coffin and step forth from it. To express this

possibility more vividly, on a corresponding spot

outside the coffin were painted or carved in relief

two great eyes out of which the dead man's eyes

might look. Inside the coffin and often also on

the corresponding part of the wall of the tomb,

the picture of a door indicated the same direction.

But in order that the false doors might serve only

for the dead man's exit and not be used by

enemies to break into the grave and the coffin,

prudent people supplied them with pictured bolts,

carefully shot to.

It is remarkable that in the innumerable texts

devoted to setting forth the fate of the dead in the

under-world, in all the references to the rites to

be practised at the grave and in the allusions to

the fate of Osiris, no consideration is ever given

to the significahce which in historic times was

ascribed to the preservation of the corpse. The

belief that the soul could occasionally return to

the body in order to go about on earth is not

sufficient to explain the adoption of so costly and

tedious a process as embalming. Still less

adequate does it seem when we consider that the

soul was not confined to the corpse for its choice

"THE EVERLASTING HOUSE" 43

of an earthly manifestation, but could adopt any

one of many other forms at its disposal without

making any demands on the survivors. This

.absence of such references indicates that originally

the significance of the corpse was much greater,

and that the measures for its preservation were

carried on up to a time when the necessity for

such measures no longer appeared so absolute.

This is one more example of what must often be

noted in the valley of the Nile—namely, that

primitive customs were kept up in strictly orthodox

fashion, even after their original significance had

been forgotten for centuries, or at least greatly

weakened.

Further indications unite with those just men-

tioned to show that in ancient Egypt theire was

a time when the belief reigned that the immortal

in man would always be connected with his body,

even after the visible life was extinct to earthly

eyes. The duration of the immortal part was bound

up with the preservation of the body. Thus the

sarcophagus became the home of the departed out

of which, as already mentioned, he could occa-

sionally look, and from which he could rise to go

about in the tomb. Consequently the Egyptians

strove to make the grave, " the everlasting house,"

as large and habitable as possible and to put in

44 OFFERINGS TO THE DEAD

it everything that had been a necessity to the

deceased in his lifetime. Thus there were placed

in the tomb furniture and utensils of all sorts for

daily and occasional use, weapons for defence,

writings with magic spells against demons or with

entertaining contents to pass the time, male and

female companions to enliven the loneliness of

the grave, food and drink. The last especially

were indispensable at all times, for the dead man

felt hunger and thirst just as did a god or a man

living on earth. If his cravings were not satis-

fied by offerings then he must needs slip out of

his grave and try to steal food. If he did not

succeed in this he fell in his despair on most

repulsive expedients, ate dung and drank urine

to still his gnawing hunger. How great was the

anxiety regarding a like fate is shown in some

formulae in the pyramid texts according to which

the king could only hope to protect himself from

such necessities by his magic power. The pro-

vision of food for the dead forms the essential part

of the Egyptian worship of the dead, and the

adoration of the gods is manifested mainly in simi-

lar care that these higher beings in the heavenly

fields shall not have to suffer from any scarcity of

food.

At first the needed gifts were brought to the

dwellers in the other world in their actual form

;

real oxen and geese were sacrificed, bread and

SIMULACRA OF OFFERINGS '45

fruit were presented ; sometimes also men were

slain at the funeral with much elaborate ritual, so

that the dead man might be followed quickly into

the other world by the servants he needed. The

only change made in the earthly form of the gifts

was that they also were embalmed, that they

might be as lasting as the dead body. Just as

the mummy had not lost its earthly form in spite

of the process it had undergone, so it was be-

lieved that the food suffered no diminution of its

nutritious qualities through similar embalming.

Real offerings were naturally very costly, hence

there arose the idea of replacing them by counter-

feit presentments. Small oxen and geese, loaves,

and libation vases of stone or baked clay were

placed in the grave. Sometimes tables for offer-

ings were set up in it, bearing on the top, carved

in relief, a plentiful choice of the most varied

viands. By means of spells the dead man could

change these simulacra into their originals and so

dispose of them at his own convenience. This

custom had the further advantage of rendering

the gifts imperishable ; no decay could touch

them. Above all, however, human sacrifice,

which was becoming inconsistent with advancing

civilisation, could now be dispensed with, and

indeed it seems to have been practised

seldom in historic times. As a rule, there were

laid with the dead in the grave little statuettes,


the so-called Ushabtis, " answerers," those small

figures of wood, stone or silicious earth that now

abound in our museums. Originally it was in-

tended that the dead man should wake them with

a spell to till the land for him, and for this

purpose they were supplied with farming imple-

ments, hoes and baskets. Besides these men-

servants with which one dead man was often

supplied by thousands, he had occasionally,

though not often, women-servants also, to form

his harem in the next world. In early times a

whole household establishment of figures, carved

in wood, was placed in the grave : bakers,

brewers, bearers of gifts, boatmen, &c.

We must add to the representations of offer-

ings, besides those in plastic form, the scenes

carved or painted on the walls of the tomb. In

them the whole life of the ancient Egyptian is

displayed before our eyes : farming from seed-

time to harvest, baking, the slaughter and cut-

ting up of oxen, the dressing of geese, brewing,

pressing grapes for wine, the manufacture of

various utensils. Then follow pictures of the

pleasant pursuits of life : hunting in the swamps

of the Nile, especially of the delta, for birds,

fish, hippopotami;games of ball, dancing, gym-

nastics, harvest-homes, &c. These are not

merely pictures from the former life of the dead

man — who in the wall-scenes is always repre-

SPELLS FOR OFFERINGS '47

sented as a spectator—intended to keep vivid to

the survivors the memory of his earthly career

;

they were also to serve a more important purpose.

The deceased could animate them by means of

spells, so that the pictures would become realities;

then the corn sprouted in the fields, the fire

burned, and the dead man sat by and gazed at

the activity going on before his eyes for his

pleasure and profit. The food grown was in-

tended for his table, the work of the servants

secured him from want, the pictured scenes

enabled him to enjoy the pleasures of the chase

over and over again in reality and to the full.

The pictured or modelled offerings to the dead

were more convenient than the actual objects

themselves, but, nevertheless, they involved a

certain amount of expense. When once the

idea had become common that it was possible by

a spell to make real objects out of the represen-

tations of them, it was but a step to the thought

that a more powerful spell could without such a

medium cause the desired objects to be produced

from nothing. The Egyptians soon took this

step. The simple repetition of a certain conse-

cration form sufficed to create the oflfering :" Be

a royal gift brought to the god Osiris that he maygive a thousand geese and a thousand loaves to,

the departed N.N.," is the formula, varied in

expression, but in substance always the same,


that covers countless stones in Egyptian graves.

It either stands alone or in company with a

longer invocation addressed to passers-by adjur-

ing them to repeat the spell as a favour to the

dead. The dedication is in the royal name, for in

the Nile Valley Pharaoh was regarded as the ap-

pointed intercessor between his people and the god.

He was himself of divine origin and sprang from

the union of a god, usually the Sun-god Ra, with

a mortal woman, generally the wife of his prede-

cessor on the throne. As such he was certain

to gain a ready hearing among the higher powers,

whose circle he had left only for a short time

and to which he hoped to return after death as a

comrade and equal. In more primitive times the

ruler himself had celebrated all acts of worship,

among which making offerings for the dead was

one of the most important. As the state de-

veloped and practical considerations prevented

this many-sided activity, the prayers and offerings

were still made in his name, in order to preserve

and emphasise in any intercourse with the gods

this ancient custom and duty.

The gift was not supposed to go direct to the

dead man, but to the god, who transferred it to

the proper recipient. This practice seemed to

correspond to the facts of earthly life. In the

valley of the Nile every man owed his position,

his property, his food, to the king, who had

SPELLS FOR OFFERING 49

granted to him either the things themselves or the

opportunity of earning them. Even the noblest

was counted in theory a vassal of Pharaoh, though

he would have resisted jealously any interference

of the king in his private affairs or business. Asthings were theoretically in this world, so they

were supposed to be in the next. Here, too, the

divine king was absolute lord of all his subjects,

especially of the dead. He who wanted to benefit

the dead proceeded most wisely when he applied

to this king and begged him, out of his plenty, to

allow what was offered to any particular dead

man to reach the one for whom it was intended.

The god could do this in two ways—either simply

by a gift, or more solemnly by means of a decree

which in his kingly capacity he issued to the de-

ceased, carefully drawn up in prescribed legal

form. In many tombs, especially of later periods,

such decrees are preserved drawn up on papyrus

or on stelae. The survivors placed them in the

tomb in the hope that the god would confirm

their contents at the right moment and order

them to be carried out by the subject gods andthe spirits of lower rank.

In these formulae the generosity of the survi-

vors takes a peculiar development. As long as

real offerings had to be brought, as long even as

pictures or images seemed necessary, they had

been satisfied to give little—perhaps one ox or a

D

so OFFERINGS TO THE DEAD

few loaves. But the moment it became a mere

matter of words they showered gifts on the dead

in thousands. The trouble was no greater, and

the satisfaction of the dwellers in eternity so much

surer. In repeating the spells it was important

to distinguish exactly the name of him for whom

the gifts were destined, for fear other less favoured

beings should seize the offerings and keep them

back from the rightful owner. In such docu-

ments, therefore, besides a man's own name, that

of his mother is generally added as a distinc-

tion, for in theory the Egyptians always held

the descent from the mother to be the surer and

more important. This was especially the case in

all rehgious matters; even in times when in secu-

lar hfe, and above all in questions of inheritance,

increased importance was attached to the descent

from the father.

The gifts were brought to the grave and ar-

ranged there ; the spell was spoken in the grave

or at its entrance. It was assumed that the dead

man was present in person, and that he had

taken up his abode as a permanency in his corpse.

The custom survived long after the belief con-

nected with it had faded, and people assigned to

the deceased a far wider dwelling-place than that

afforded by the narrow limits of the tomb. The

Egyptians still strove perpetually not only to

make the tomb dwelling as pleasant and comfort-

THE "OSIRIS" OF THE DEAD 51

able as possible, they continued to treat the

mummy as if it were really the immortal per-

sonality. They placed amulets upon it to facilitate

its journey into the other world, and provided it

with collections of spells to be spoken there. In

short, they equipped it in every possible way for

the journey to the gods. And yet it was not the

mummy which was to take this journey, but

something else, outwardly exactly like it, but per-

sonally a wholly distinct being, distinguished by

the Egyptian as the "Osiris"of the dead man. The

Egyptians never tried to explain the contradiction

in the conception we have described. The rela-

tion of the "Osiris" to the mummy is a fact which

we can only assert and accept, however illogical

the belief in two like yet unlike forms of the same

personality may appear. The origin of the belief

is explained by the fact that at first the mummywas considered the lasting dwelling of the im-

mortal personality, while later it was supposed to

be represented by the " Osiris." But notwithstand-

ing the changed conceptions of the immortal part

of man, the nation did not venture to give up its

ancient habits and customs, although these had

been made void of meaning by the new doctrines.

The journey of the " Osiris " of the dead from

the tomb to the throne of Osiris the king forms a

52 JOURNEY OF THE "OSIRIS"

large portion of the contents of the religious

writings of the Middle and New Kingdoms,

that is, from about 2500 b.c. ; and to this the

best known and most widely diffused of these

texts, namely, the so-called Book of the Dead, is

devoted. It contains the spells by means of

which the dead man may hope to surmount the

hindrances that he meets with in the course of

his journeyings. Above all, as we have already

noted, it contains the names of the demons of the

under-world as well as the names of objects there,

this knowledge being most important to the dead

man, since to the Egyptian the name was not a

mere chance mark of the thing it belonged to, but

an essential part of it. Gods and demons must

perforce favour the man who knows and can pro-

nounce their names. According to an old legend,

the goddess Isis succeeded by stratagem in com-

pelling the Sun-god to whisper his name in her

ear, and thereby appropriated the power of the

divine king and became the greatest of the god-

desses. A demon could do no more mischief to a

man who called him correctly by name in the

under-world ; if the deceased named a gate it flew

open before him ; if he knew the right word, the

thing which corresponded to it became his.

It is remarkable that the Egyptian never at-

tempted to map out the way leading from the

grave to the eternal home even in the inexact

JOURNEY OF THE "OSIRIS" 53

fashion in which he tried to plan out the under-

world in the " Book of that which is in the Duat"

or the "Book of the Gates." Not even the order

was fixed in which the dead man must pass

through the separate Spaces. Hence there is no

fixed succession for the different sections of the

Book of the Dead. One thing only seems sure

—

the way traverses the earth. Sometimes the

dead man walks, sometimes he goes by boat ; in

fact, he travels just as he might in his lifetime

have travelled in the Delta, The beasts of prey

that threaten him are those of earth, such as

snakes and crocodiles. He longs for food ; he

longs even more for drink, and early in his

journey a goddess hands him drink from a tree,

just as in the desert it is among trees that the

earthly wanderer finds life-giving water. Thedirection of his journey is towards the west, where

the sun sets, and where behind desolate wastes

the secret of the land of the blessed is hidden.

Occasionally in these representations the north,

or the sky near the Great Bear, appears as the

abode of the dead, side by side with the kingdom

of Osiris in the west. Here we have interpolated

into the midst of Osirian doctrines conceptions

in origin altogether different, and placing the

land of the dead in the sunless north. In the

Osirian teachings the land of the west is synonym-

ous with the land of the dead, and in this belief

54 THE JUDGMENT OF OSIRIS

the dead were buried on the west side of the Nile

Valley, on the edge of the desert through which

they had to take their way.

It is needless here to picture the separate inci-

dents of the journey, regarding which opinions

have varied not only in different times, but even

in the same period. It ended in the Hall of the

Double Truth, in which Osiris, supported by

forty-two attendants, sat as judge of the dead.

The jackal-headed Anubis led the dead man into

the hall, where he uttered a long prayer in which

he enumerated forty-two sins of which he was

not guilty. He had wronged no man, had not

oppressed his fellows, had been guilty ot no

malice, had committed no deed abhorrent to the

gods, had not led masters to do injury to their

slaves, had caused no one to suffer hunger or to

weep, had neither committed nor commanded a

murder, had not destroyed nor taken from the

sacrificial bread, had not stolen the clothes and

swathings of the dead, had been guilty of no

immoral act, &c.

At the end of this appeal the truth of the

assertions was tested by Thoth, god of wisdom

and writing, and Horus, son of Osiris. They

weighed the heart of the dead man against the

symbol of Truth, and sentence was pronounced

according to the result. The Book of the Dead

says Uttle as to the fate of him who failed to

THE FIELDS OF AALU 55

satisfy the test. It speaks of his punishment, of

his destruction, of the threatening Devourer from

the Land of the West, but no details are given.

The possessor of a copy of the Book of the Dead

hoped by his knowledge of magic to escape this

terrible fate, and he needed no description of it.

That lot only was pictured which each man

desired for himself—the dwelling in the realm of

the just, the justified, in the Fields of Aalfl.

This realm was figured after the likeness of

earth, and closely resembled the delta even in its

name, "Aalu" meaning in the first place the

plants that spring up in swampy ground. Through

it flowed a Nile, which with its wide-spreading

branches formed islands, where dwelt the dead

and the gods. Here the immortals ate and drank,

fought with their enemies, hunted, amused them-

selves playing draughts either with their com-

panions or with their own soul, sacrificed to the

gods, sailed about on the canals. Their chief

employment was agriculture, the various processes

of which are exactly depicted in representations

of the Fields of Aalu. First the soil is turned up

with the plough, then the seed is sown ; afterwards

the corn, which has grown much above a man's

height, is reaped with a sickle ; oxen tread out

the grain from which the chaff is winnowed and

which at last is offered up to the god of the Nile,

to whom is primarily due the blessing of harvest.

56 RE-INCARNATION

This doctrine—a comparatively simple one, and

conceiving the life after death as much the same

as life on earth—is certainly one of the oldest

theories of immortality held by the Egyptians.

Similar conceptions have been found among the

most various nations. According to the primitive

form of this doctrine each man kept the position

which he had held on earth ; he who had ruled in

Egypt remained for ever a ruler ; he who had

served was ever a servant. Gradually, however, !

the wish crept in to prepare for the dead a happier

lot than he had enjoyed on earth. This end was

to be gained by means of spells which would enable

him to lead a free and joyous life in the Fields of

Aalu, served by the Ushabti statuettes that his

friends had placed in his tomb. Should this

celestial life pal), he could return to wander

about on earth visiting the places that had been

dear to him, or could sojourn for a season in his

grave and there receive the offerings of his

friends. Or he could change himself into a heron,

a swallow, a snake, a crocodile, a god, could

indeed take any form that he pleased.

This re-incarnation at pleasure is not the Indian

doctrine of transmigration ; it was not intended

to bring about a gradual purification of the soul

but was a privilege falling to the lot of the dead

who were pronounced just, who were well versed

in the necessary magic spells. It procured for

IMMORTAL PARTS OF MAN 57

such an one the greatest possible mobiHty, the

greatest strength imaginable ; it equipped him

with all-penetrating power and allowed him from

time to time to pervade everything and all things,

without, however, being merged in the All or

losing any part of his individuality.

Side by side with the conception of the dead as

travelling in person to the West, there was from

earliest times another and much more complicated

conception, contradictory of the first and un-

reconciled with it. According to this the immortal

part—which together with the body buried as

a mummy had formed the earthly man—was not

a homogeneous being as most races have assumed,

but was composed of various elements. These

separate parts, the number of which varied greatly

according to different dogmas, were united in the

body, but at the moment of death they left it, and

each alone sought its way into eternity. This

doctrine was grafted on to the more common one

of the Fields of Aalu by supposing that after the

judgment scene the various parts of the dead man

were allowed to come together again, so that -,

the earthly being existed once more in flesh, L

blood, and soul, and would henceforth dwell in I

the land of the blessed. Usually, however, these

parts of the soul are treated in the texts as

58 IMMORTAL PARTS OF MAN

entirely independent beings, and they play such

an important part in Egyptian conceptions of the

other world that we must here consider briefly

at least the chief of them.

The best known part of the soul is the " Ka,"

a form exactly resembling the man, born with

him and remaining with him till he dies. But as

regards the king it was supposed to be somewhat

otherwise. In sculptured scenes the King's Kaappears behind the monarch in the form of a little

man, and sometimes the king is seen approaching

his own Ka with prayers and offerings, receiving

from it in return promises of success, fortune and

power. A corresponding relationship between

themselves and their Kas was doubtless attri-

buted to the gods, each of whom possessed his

own Ka. The great temple of Memphis, for ex-

ample, is not known merely as the dwelling of

the god Ptah, but is distinguished also as the

" Fortress of the Ka of Ptah." In the moment

of death the Ka left the man, becoming itself

henceforth his real personality. To the Ka are

addressed both prayers and offerings, for it needed

food and drink, and dwelt in eternity without

losing the power to return occasionally to the

grave, to become "the Ka living in the coffin"

and to remain for a time united with the mummy.The belief in this dual personality of man may

well have originated in dreams. During a man's

"KA," "BA," ETC. 59

life his bodily form might sometimes be seen by

his sleeping friends, he himself being far from

them, and the same thing might happen after his

death. It is also clear that the idea of the Kahas much in common with the idea of the "Osiris"

of the dead. Here one is led to surmise that two

strains of belief mingled in the conventional

religion of Egypt. According to one the immortal

Double is called the "Osiris," according to the other

it is called the "Ka." A third figure, which seems

to have closely resembled the other two, played

some part in the beginning of the New Kingdom,

especially in Thebes. This is the " Khou " or

"Akhou," "the perfect shining one" of the dead.

Occasionally it is adored as a god ; again, prayers

for the dead are made to it, and, as in the fusion

of two originally separate ideas the Egyptian

could speak of the Ka of the Osiris of the im-

mortalised dead, so he could invoke also the Kaof his Khou.

The name of a man calls up the mental image

of him, and that this experience affected the

belief in the Ka, and may, indeed, have given

rise to it, is indicated by the fact that occasionally

Ka and Name are put on the same level. Atten-

tion has already been called to the importance of

the Name, which is sometimes regarded as an

immortal part of the man possessing an inde-

pendent personality. Another part of the soul,

6o IMMORTAL PARTS OF MAN

the "Ba," or human-headed bird, could, as wehave seen, be considered the soul of the man.

It is often represented visiting the mummy,caressing it with its human hands or going

down into the grave to refresh it with food and

drink.

There are three other independent souls of

which mention is made in the texts. The " Sahu "

has the form of a man swathed in mummy cloths.

The " Khaibit," usually represented as a huge

fan, is really intended as the shadow cast by the

man in his lifetime, which, like Peter Schlemihl's

Shadow in Chamisso's tale, had a real existence

of its own. Finally, there is the " Sekhem,"" the reverend form," an incarnation of the man's

outward appearance, transfigured indeed, but

nevertheless retaining its likeness to him. These

three soul elements resemble the " Osiris " or the

Ka so closely that it seems probable that they

were adopted into the Osirian cult from other

parallel creeds. It is noticeable also that though

they are often named, nothing exact is known

about them and no clearly defined significance is

accorded them.

Much more important in the religious texts is

the "Ab," the heart of the man. The heart wasconsidered by the Egyptians to be in general the

seat of life. If the dead man wished to rise and

live again he must obtain possession of this abso-

THE "AB," OR HEART 6r

lutely indispensable organ. In connection with

this idea there was developed an independent

doctrine of the journeying of the heart, which

was supposed to leave the man at his death to

wander into the other world. Here the dead

man found it and at length succeeded in uniting

himself with it anew. This temporary separation

of the organ of life from the body presented a

great difficulty to the thoughtful Egyptian. With-

out the heart life was impossible to the body and

therefore impossible also to the " Osiris," which

was pictured as identical in form with the body.

To overcome this difficulty it was resolved to give

the mummy an artificial heart to make up for the

loss of the real one, the place of which was

supplied by round flints of a reddish brown

colour, or later by little models of the vessel in

which the heart was placed when taken out of

the body at the embalming. Sometimes it is

represented by large images of the scarabasus,

flattened on the under side, the creature which,

in the Nile Valley, always symbolised life and

development. Having previously been animated

by spells the artificial heart was inserted in the

place formerly occupied by the real organ, and it

was hoped that its presence would restore to the

body warmth and vitality. The correct magic for-

mula was written sometimes on the heart-scara-

bseus itself, sometimes in the collection of spells

62 SUMMARY

given for the use of the "Osiris." Other less

important constituent parts of the immortal being

need not here be noticed.

It is sufficiently clear from what has already

been passed in review that many independent

beliefs combined in producing the doctrine of

immortality as set forth in the Book of the Dead

and similar texts. Holding fast to all that he

had inherited from his fathers, the ancient Egyp-

tian certainly possessed a multitude of religious

conceptions ; a homogeneous religion he never

developed. We may ask how it was possible for

him at one and the same time to believe all these

contradictory doctrines ; to hold that after death

he would dwell in the gloomy regions of the

under-world, that he would travel the heavens

with the sun, that he would till the ground in

the fields of the blessed, that his soul would fly

to heaven in the likeness of a bird, that it would

wander towards the West, a complete entity in

human form, and that it would be dissolved into

the many parts of its immortal personality. The

question cannot be answered. Modern research

can only establish the fact that all these con-

ceptions were co-existent and regarded as equally

authoritative. This it is constrained to do even

at the risk of placing in a less favourable light

—

SUMMARY 63

at any rate as regards the realm of speculative

religious thought—that "wisdom of the Egyp-

tians" so highly extolled by classical authors.

As exhibited in their own records the creed of

the Egyptians as to the life beyond death pre-

sents an extraordinary medley of philosophic

notions and the crudest ways of thinking be-

longing to primitive and uncultured peoples.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

Like the beliefs of other nations as to life after death,

Egvptian eschatology was bound up with Egyptian

religion, being the outcome of beliefs as to the nature of

the world and man. No consecutive history of Egyptian

religion has yet been attempted.

For a brief general summary of the main features of

Eg>ptian religion and Egyptian beliers as to the nature

of hfe after death, see articles by F. LI. Griffith in the

Special Courses Magazine of the National Home-Reading

Unio7i, 1898, \Zqq, on Religion, The Lisposal of the Dead,

The Funeral Ritual and the Funerary Texts, The Book of

the Dead.

The principal exponent of the whole subject is M. Mas-

pero, who has given a full popular account of his views in

chaps, i. ii. of his Histoire Ancienne des Peuplesde lOrient

Classique, tome x. Les Origines (English edition, iJazcw of

Civilisation, 1894, price 24^.). For the researches which

led him to these views, see his Etudes de Mythologie et

d'Archeologie Egyptiennes (Paris, 1893 ; price 20.f.). Heholds that the Egyptians were essentially polytheistic.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 65

Wiedemann, in his Die Religion der Alien JEgypter,

emphasises above all the incoherence, contradictions and

conservative syncretism of Egyptian religion. " Avoiding

any attempt to interpret or to systematise, I have

endeavoured to set before the reader the principal deities,

myths, religious ideas and doctrines as they are to be

found in the texts." The quotation is from the preface to

an EngUsh edition (1897), revised and augmented by the

author, with illustrations and full index (price 12s. 6d).

A paper, by the same author, on the Ancient Egyptiat

Doctrine ofImmortality was also amplified for an English

edition (1895). This little book (price 3^.), which is illus-

trated, is an interesting introduction to the subject.

Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, by Prof.

Petrie, is, especially in the first part, a brilliant and

suggestive generalisation. The author regards national

religions as in origin essentially tribal or racial, and the

presence of heterogeneous and contradictory elements as

evidence of fusion of races. Applying this key to Egyptian

religion, he finds magic to represent the religious stratum

of the indigenous (negro ?) population, the Osirian cult to

be mainly Libyan, the cosmic or solar worship centring

in Heliopolis to be Mesopotamian, the worship of per-

sonified qualities to have been imposed by the dynastic

(" Puntite ") race—all fused together in prehistoric times

(London, 1898 ;price is. dd.).

Erman, the founder of the historical treatment of the

Egyptian language, writing in 1885, considered it as then

impossible to give a satisfactory scientific account of the

religion. He presented the subject, however, in chaps,

xii. xiii. of his Mgypten (English edition, Life in Ancient

66 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

Egypt, published 1894 ;price 21J. net), and whatever he

says as to the sacred writings is of great weight. His latest

conclusions will probably be found in the forthcoming

Handbook to the Religious Papyri in the Berlin Museum.

Brugsch, Die Religion und Myihologie der Alien

^gypter. Part I. 1884, Part H. 1888 (i6j.). It is a serious

undertaking to read the 750 pages of this book, of which

there is no English translation. The writer contends that

the Egyptian religion was throughout monumental times

everywhere one and the same, essentially an exalted

monotheism ; but the texts he quotes in support of his

view are mostly of Ptolemaic date. The value of the

book lies in data of the Graeco-Roman period, but these

are very unsafe guides in studying the religion of earlier

epochs.

One of the first Egyptologists to give a general view of

the Egyptian religion, Le Page Renouf, in his Origin andGrowth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion ofAncient Egypt (Hibbert Lectures, 1879; \os. 6d.), con-

tended that the Egyptian religionwas originally pure and

monotheistic, though afterwards debased by accretion of

mythology.

Lanzone's Dizinario di Mitologia jEgizia gives the

Egyptian deities in the alphabetical order of their names

together with their figures, titles, definitions of the roles

attributed to them, and references to the principal texts

relating to them (Turin, 1881-6; price £,\\).

Maspero, mLes Inscriptions des Pyravtides de Saggarak

(1894 ; £z 5-S'-)> published the Pyramid texts for the first

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 67

time, he giving them in hieroglyphic and in translation.

The originals are inscribed in the pyramids of five con-

secutive kings of the Vth and Vlth Dynasties. These are

the oldest collections of Egyptian religious texts known,

and correspondingly important.

Several English translations have been made of the

body of texts known as The Book of the Dead; the latest

and most popular of these is that by Dr. Budge (Kegan

Paul, 1898 ; 3 vols., price £,1 loj.).

P. 21. "The Book of that which is in the Under-world."

The abridged version from originals on papyrus, text andtranslation, with illustrations, see Le Livre de ce gu'il

y

a dans IHadls, by G. Jdquier (Paris, 1894 ; price 8j.).

" The Book of the Gates." The text—without trans-

lation—and its Egyptian illustrations on the sarcophagus

of Sety I. (Soane Museum, London) is given in The Sar-

cophagus of Oimenepthah, by Bonomi and Sharpe (Long-

mans, 1864 ; out of print). For a study of these texts, see

Maspero's Les Hypogees royaux de Thlbes In his Etudesde Religion et de Mythologie Egyptiennes.

For the Funeral Ritual, see plates, text and translation

into Italian, // Libra dei Eunerali, Schiaparelli (Turin,

1 88 1 -1 890) ; Maspero, Le RituU du Sacrifice Fumraire,

in his Etudes, and La Table d'Offrandes in Revue de

PHistoire des Religions, 1897.

Students wishing to investigate the original sources for

themselves will find the needful guidance to publications

of texts, scenes of ritual, &c., and to the general archaeology

of the subject, in the footnotes and references of the works

€8 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

named in the above list. Before building any theories on

these documents a student should carefully note the

testimony of scholars as to the difficulty of reading, let

alone interpreting them. (See, ^.^., Erman, Life in Ancient

Egypt, pp. 343 et seq., and Griffith in The Book of the

Bead, National Home-Reading Union Special Courses

Magazine^

Theories founded on the authority of Herodotus,

Plutarch, Diodorus, &c., are to be regarded with great

caution, not only because these writers lived at a late and

decadent period in Egyptian history, but also because

of their credulity, and their imperfect equipment for

observing and recording the manners and customs of a

foreign people. All the valuable indications to be gathered

from their statements require careful checking from

Egyptian sources, literary and archasological. (On this

point, see Griffith, pp. 162 et seq. o{ Authority and Archce-

ology, Sacred and Profane, edited by D. G, Hogarth

;

Murray, 1899; price ids.)

Printed hy Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co.London &= Edinburgh

A.

Documents

The realms of the Egyptian dead, according to the belief